


less bigger than the least begin

by spacenarwhal



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Beds, Codependency, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2019-12-26 22:30:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18291518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacenarwhal/pseuds/spacenarwhal
Summary: There are two beds.They’ve been rooming together for more than a decade and not even leaving their natural habitat for the wilds of New Jersey is enough to make them slip up when they’re making their reservations.There are two beds, draped in mustard yellow comforters and adorned with pillows that long ago lost their lift. Foggy doesn’t even want to know what Matt can pick up from the bedsheets, is happier living in willful ignorance if it means he doesn’t spend the night worrying about mites.





	less bigger than the least begin

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was entirely inspired by this lovely post by tumblr user eijiroukiriot that reads " _i see your “and there was only one bed” and raise you “and there were two beds but they felt so far apart, so unsure if they could ever cross that line from friends to something more, pining so hard for each other that when person a wakes up in the middle of the night to person b crawling into their bed, they have no objections_ ”

There are two beds.

They’ve been rooming together for more than a decade and not even leaving their natural habitat for the wilds of New Jersey is enough to make them slip up when they’re making their reservations.

There are two beds, draped in mustard yellow comforters and adorned with pillows that long ago lost their lift. Foggy doesn’t even want to know what Matt can pick up from the bedsheets, is happier living in willful ignorance if it means he doesn’t spend the night worrying about mites.

 

-

 

They make nice at the conference and establish some new connections and pick up a few promising possibilities before they have to make their way back upstairs.

It’s not really late, not by their normal standards—barely even ten, surely before the really bad crime-doers get going—but Foggy’s whole body is heavy from dozens of four ounce cups of cheap red wine. Matt’s lines etched in lips are stained burgundy, his tongue nearly purple when Foggy catches a glimpse of it when he talks, and he smiles loose and lazy when Foggy asks him if he’s drunk.

“Maybe.” He shrugs, and Foggy knows that means no. A truly drunk Matt Murdock would never admit defeat, but if Matt wants to let his shoulders go loose as he leans against the back wall of the elevator, Foggy isn’t going to call him on it.

Matt takes his arm as they shuffle their way off the elevator, his cane hovering over the ugly yellow-orange checkered carpet as Foggy counts down the numbers to their door.  

There was a time and place when something like this might have happened differently. When they were younger, still defining the edges of themselves and what they could mean to each other. When Foggy’s face flushing at the sight of Matt could have given way to something different. But that time was long ago now, the place lost to time, Foggy’s feelings a secret he never kept as well as he wanted to believe he did and Matt’s inaction an answer all its own.

Foggy smiles at him but doesn’t tell him, keeps it a secret because it feels like one of the few he can actually keep safe these days. He tries not to feel too much like an asshole for keeping it.

 

-

 

Foggy turns the television on because it feels like there should be something playing in the background while Matt shucks his clothes off with the same careless grace he’s always had. Belt and shoes and shirt, the pane of his back criss-crossed and double-crossed with scars. Foggy doesn’t advert his eyes the way he did in college, face flushed with nervousness and desire both. He doesn’t think his heart even skips a beat, just studies the marked expanse of Matt’s back and remembers what the skin felt like under his fingers all the times he’s poked and prodded and prayed Matt wasn’t broken inside.

Matt pushes his slacks off his hips and Foggy watches him fold them by shaking them out by the cuffs at the ankles, lining up the clean pressed lines that run up and down the front and back of the leg, maneuvering by touch and memory alone and still managing to fold them better than Foggy ever will.

“You wanna shower first?” Matt asks, like he’s not half in the shower already, unfocused eyes resting gently on the wall above Foggy’s head. 

“Nah,” Foggy answers, wiggling back against the sunken pillows, “I’m good here.”

Matt nods, maroon mouth moving into a half-smile.

Matt leaves the door cracked open while he showers, thin tendrils of steam floating lazily out into the room. Foggy doesn’t know when that started. Somewhere after Matt’s miraculous resurrection but definitely before Marci gave him back the ring.

“Law and Order or Criminal Minds?” Foggy calls as he flicks through the programming guide.

“Jerry Orbach?” Matt asks, voice warbled by the shower walls.

“Jeremy Sisto.” Foggy answers.

Matt boos like a drunken ghost. Foggy tries not to chuckle audibly and knows he failed at the sound of Matt’s echoing laughter, reaching out to him from behind the door like an answer.  

 

-

 

Foggy still has these dreams where he wakes up and Matt’s gone. He’ll look for him, search him out in familiar places and dark spaces and never finds a trace of him. There’s just an empty coffin buried in the ground and an empty apartment and an empty compartment underneath an ancient boxer’s robe.

Foggy wakes up his heart in his throat and his whole body strung so tightly it feels like he’s going to crack in half, split clean down the middle and never be whole again.

Sometimes when he wakes up from those types of dreams he lies in bed, eyes wide open and starring up at the light slanting across the ceiling, trying to remind himself that it’s only a dream. That Matt’s back. Matt’s alive. And maybe he isn’t safe or sound or half the things Foggy thought he needed Matt to be, but he’s alive and it’s better than the alternative.

Other nights his heart doesn’t slow and his hand fumbles at the light switch and he squints at the face of his phone. If it’s late enough he fumbles at his screen and listens to the thin dial tone, waits for Matt’s gravel-thick voice to come through speaker.

“Hey,” Matt usually says, without pause or question. He stopped asking after the first few calls. “Jones found this place that sells soba noodles all night. We should go.”

It’s quiet behind him so Foggy knows that Japanese cuisine aside, Matt’s not out right now. “Am I going to be paying for any property damage tomorrow?” Foggy asks, heart slowly calming, feeling less likely to burst against his lungs.

Matt huffs, “Barely any. Jessica managed to undent the door frame after she kicked the door in. I told them I knew a guy who could fix it for cheap.”

Foggy’s mouth twitches, too small to be a smile, but the prickling dread recedes down his throat. “You two are doing wonders for Chuck’s business.”

“We live to serve.” Matt says, voice gentle and low. Foggy holds his phone close like a tether.

 

-

 

“Good night, Fog.” Matt says, dressed in a purple NYU shirt so ancient now that most of the lettering is cracked beyond legibility. He smiles in Foggy’s direction and even now that the purple-tint has been scrubbed away, there’s still something gentled in his expression. Foggy wonders if it’s possible for someone to look different away from the glaring lights of a city, if it isn’t just a trick of the low-wattage bulb hidden under a cream-colored shade.

“Sleep tight Matty.” Foggy tells him, turning over under his own bleached sheets, watching Matt stack all his pillows, one atop the other, before sliding under his own blankets. Matt must know, Foggy thinks to himself. Matt, who can hear hearts beat, blood pump, eyelashes flutter, who can get the layout of a room from the way air moves, and taste fear in the air, must know how much Foggy looks. How much he’s always looked, like Matt a lighthouse calling him back to harbor.

“Don’t say anything about bedbugs.” He orders, reaching for the lamp between their beds.

“Oh, those are the least of our worries.” Matt says, grinning like an asshole before Foggy plunges the room into the dark.

 

-

 

He has this dream sometimes. It’s different from the others.

In it Foggy is flying through the city, leaping from building to building in the light of day, watching the city streets whizz by below him. He’s never afraid of falling and he knows, even if he doesn’t always see him, that Matt has him.

Despite everything that’s happened before, Foggy knows Matt will never let him fall.

 

-

 

It’s not a dream that wakes Foggy tonight.

The bed dips and for a split second Foggy thinks its Marci come back from the bathroom but no, he remembers between one inhale and the next exhale. There’s no lilac on the air and the pillowcase beneath his cheek is scratchy, and he remembers mustard bedcovers and a merlot grin, Matt’s laughter carried on a puff of stream.

“Matty?” Foggy asks, the word slurred soft with sleep, and Matt makes a quiet humming noise, shifts closer under the blankets, until one of his hairy shins is brushing against Foggy’s leg where his sleep pants have ridden up.

“I couldn’t hear you—in the dream—and I—” There’s something like fear in Matt’s voice, but different, softer, like cream and gold, swirled together, it gives in the center.

Foggy’s heart stills. Matt must hear it, and Foggy wonders if he reads the question in his silence, if he can feel the shape of the words like he does the metal springs coiled underneath his body. “You were too far away.” Matt says, and his leg is pressed against Foggy’s, the heat of it sinking into Foggy’s skin, almost too warm for comfort.

“C’mere.” Foggy says before he can second guess the offer, shifting so that Matt can come closer, press his too warm body against Foggy’s side, until Foggy’s arm can wrap around his shoulders, hold him in place. Matt doesn’t quite fit, broad and hard, muscles unforgiving everywhere Foggy’s soft, but Matt settles with a contented sound, goes heavy and boneless against Foggy.

There’s nothing for Foggy to do but to hold him.

 

-

 

Morning comes with lukewarm light leaking in through the filmy brown curtains and Matt’s snoring quieted to the point where Foggy knows he’s awake before he’s even opened his eyes.

Matt must know he’s awake now too, probably heard it before Foggy even knew it himself, because his hand moves, sweeps up Foggy’s side and comes to a rest over Foggy’s heart.

“Foggy.” Matt whispers, sleep-sour breath ghosting over Foggy’s face, but his body is warm and heavy and real where it slides against and over Foggy’s, blanketing Foggy in Matt.

Foggy’s hands move, find the small of Matt’s back, the soft-smooth skin there where his shirt has wrinkled upward. His fingertips dance in lazy circles, courageously venture just a little further beneath the worn-thin fabric of Matt’s shirt until he can lay his palm flat, press Matt closer.

He’s half-hard in his sleep pants but it’s inconsequential compared to the feeling of Matt’s body, to Matt, his nose bumping up against the bottom of Foggy’s chin, his lips grazing just barely against Foggy’s throat.

They’ll have to talk, Foggy knows they will, they’re too old and too deep in each other to sweep something like this under the rug, they live in each other’s pockets and ignoring change has never gotten either of them anywhere good.

But right now there’s this, this nest of blankets and limbs and closeness.

Matt’s name is familiar on his tongue, feels like the greatest word Foggy knows, and Matt’s fingers curl into the fabric of Foggy’s shirt, hold him close as though there’s anywhere for him to go, anywhere else he’d want to be.

Neither of them let go.

 


End file.
